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PENNSYLVANIA'S PART 
IN THE 

WINNING OF THE WEST 



An Address delivered before the Pennsylvania Society of St. Louis, 
December 12, 1901 

BY 

HORACE KEPHART, 

Librarian of the St. Louis Mercantile Library 



ST. LOUIS, U. S. A. 



Published by the Bureau of Publicity of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. 



1902 



THF LIBRARY OF 


CONQRESS, 


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JAN. 25 1S')2 


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COPTHIGHT, l96t» 

BY 

HORACE KEPHART. 



PENNSYLVANIA'S PART IN 



THE WINNING OF THE WEST. 



In a vague way we think of all the east as old, and all the west as 
new. We picture civilization as advancing westward from the Atlantic 
in a long, straight front, like a wave or a line of battle. But in point of 
fact it was not so. There Avas a permanent settlement of Europeans a 
thousand miles to the west of us before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. 
Cahokia and Kaskaskia were thriving villages before Baltimore was 
founded; and our own city of St. Louis was building in the same year 
that New Jersey became a British possession. At a time when Daniel 
Boone was hunting beaver on the Osage and the Missouri, Fenimore 
Cooper was drawing the types for future Leatherstockim/ Tales from his 
neighbors in the wilderness only a hundred and fifty miles from New 
York City. 

THE WEDGE OF CIVILIZATION. 

American settlement advanced toward the Mississippi in the shape 
of a wedge, of which the entering edge Avas first Reading, in Pennsyl- 
vania, then Lancaster, then the Shenandoah valley, then Louisville, and 
finally St. Louis. When the second census of the United States was 
taken, in 1800, nearly all the white inhabitants of our country lived in a 
triangle formed by a diagonal southwestward from Portland, Maine, to 
the mouth of the Tennessee river, here meeting another diagonal running 
northwestward from Savannah, with the Atlantic for a base. Central 
and western New York, northern Pennsylvania, and all tht ^vritory north 
of the Ohio river, save in its immediate vicinity, were almt uninhabited 
by whites, and so were Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. let the state, 
of Kentucky had half as many people as Massachusetts, and Tennessee 
had already been admitted into the Union. 

THE HARDEST WAY WEST. 

As a rule, geographical expansion proceeds along the lines of least 
resistance, following the natural highways afforded by navigable rivers 
and open plains. It is easily turned aside by mountain chains, dense 
forests, and hostile natives. Especially was this true in the days be- 
fore railroads. But the development of our older west shows a striking 
exception to this rule; for the entering wedge was actually driven 
through one of the most rugged, difficult, and inhospitable regions to be 
found along the whole frontier of the British possessions. 



This fact is strange euout;h lo lix our atteutiou; but it is doubly 
strange ^vheu we consider that there Avas no climatic, political, nor,, eco- 
nomic necessity for such defiance of nature's laws. We can see why the 
Mississippi should have been explored from the north, rather than from 
its mouth, because Canada was settled before Louisiana, and it is easier 
to float downstream than to pole or cordelle against the current. But 
why was not the west entered and settled through the obviously easj' 
(•..iir«<. (if the Mohawk valley? 

Ni:\V YORK'S OPrOKTUNlTY. 

Beyond ihis valley were gentle slopes, and many a route practicable 
for settlers into the rich country of Ohio. The central trail of the Iro- 
(juois. beaten smoother than a wagon-road, ran straight west from Al- 
bany, through the fairest portion of New Yorli, to the present site of 
Buffalo, and thence followed the southern shore of Lake Erie into Ohio. 
"Where it crossed the Genesee, tlie old war-trail of the Senecas branched 
off to the south, pas."5iug behind the furthermost ramparts of the Alle- 
ghanies, (o the forks of the Ohio. Moccasined feet traveling over these 
trails for centuries had worn them from three to twelve inches into the 
ground, so that they were easy to follow on the darkest night. These 
were only two of several Avell-marked routes from ancient Albany to the 
new west. It was to this easy communication with the country beyond 
the Appalachians that the Irotiuois owed their commanding position on 
the continent. 

These Iroquois wi.'rt' in the way, to be sure; liut with them New York 
had every advantage over her sister provinces. Her policy toward 
these powerful Indians was conciliatory. She was allied with them 
against the French. The Six Nations ravaged the frontiers of all the 
other colonies, from Massachusetts to Carolina, and carried their con- 
quests to the Mississippi, but they spared New York and even invited 
her to build forts on their border as outposts against the French, New 
York had the most influential Indian agent of his time in Sir William 
Johnson, who had married the sister of the Mohawk chief Brant, and by 
lier had several sons who were war chiefs of the Iroquois. In 1745 the 
lro(iuols even ceded to New York a strip of land sixty miles wide, alon.LT 
the soutliern shores of lakes Ontario and Erie, extending to the modern 
Cleveland. /"At the period of which I am speaking, it should have been 
comparatively easy for the Knickerbockers to secure passage for their 
emigrants into the western country had they chosen to ask it. 

And back of New York there were other colonists who might well 
have profited by western expansion. New England had strong economic 
temptation to stretch out in that direction. Her own lands were neitlier 
rich nor extensive. The sea-to-sea charters of the Britisli, however im- 
pudent and farcical they may liave been, gave New England as good claim 
to western t<'rrit«>rv as had tlie middle and southern colonies. 



PENNSYLVANIA'S DIFFICULTIES. 

On the othev hand, Pennsylvania and the southern colonies had no 
easy access to the west. Nature herself had bidden these people to rest 
content in their tidewater regions, and frowned upon any westward ex- 
pansion by interposing- the mights'^ barriers of the Blue Ridge and the AUo- 
ghanies, rising tier beyond tier in parallel chains from northern Pennsyl- 
vania to Alabama. Few trails crossed these mountains. From base to 
summit they were clad in dense forest, matted into jungle by luxuriant 
undergrowth. No one knew what lay beyond them, nor how far through 
this "forest savage, harsh, impregnable," a traveller must bore until he 
reached land fit for settlement. It was well known, however, that the 
trans-Alleghany region, whatever might be its economic features, was 
dangerous ground. The Indians themselves could not occupy it, for it 
had been for ages the common battle-ground of opposing tribes. Any 
savage met within its confines was sure to be upon the warpath against 
any and all comers. Kentucky was indeed "the dark and bloody ground," 
and he who entered took his life in his hand, be he white or red. 

Thus the chances of success in any westward movement were in 
favor of New York and New England, and against Pennsylvania. Yet it 
was the latter, that did the work. Central and western New York re- 
mained a wilderness until Missouri was settling with Americans. New 
England took little or no part in western affairs until after the revolution, 
Avhen, the west having been won, Massachusetts and Connecticut, calmly 
over-stepping New Y'ork and Pennsylvania, laid thrifty hand upon the 
public domain north of Pittsburg and west to the Mississippi. 

HOW THE WEST WAS ENTERED. 

We have seen that the west was actually entered by the most difficult 
and hostile route, and this in spite of political and economic reasons for 
choosing a more northerly and easier line of advance. I do not remember 
that this has ever before been pointed out; but it is a fact of deep signifi- 
cance, for it determined what should be the temper of the great west, and 
what should be its course of development. 

The wedge of settlement was driven through the heart of the Alle- 
ghanies because there dwelt at the foot of the mountains a people more 
aggressive, more daring, and more independent than the tidewater stock. 
This people acted on its own initiative, not only without government aid. 
but sometimes in defiance of government. Jt won to the Amei-ican 
flag not only the central west, but the northwest and southwest as well; 
and it was, for the most part, the lineal descendants of these men who 
first, of Americans, explored the far west, and subdued it for future 
settlement. 

This explains Avhy Missouri, rather than the northern tier of new 
states, became in its turn the vanguard and outpost of civilization, as 
Kentucky and Tennessee had been before her, and Virginia and Pennsyl- 
vania before them. It explains why, when mountain and forest barriers 
had been left behind, and the vast western plain offered countless parallel 



routes of travel to the Rockies, such routes were not used, but all the 
great trans-continental trails, whether to Santa Fe. California, or Oregon, 
focussed for half a century at St. Louis or Independence. It explains why 
the majority of our famous scouts and explorers and Indian fighters were 
men whose strain went bade to the Shenandoah valley or the Yadkin, and 
why most of them could trace their descent still further back to Pennsyl- 
vania, mother of western pioneers. - 

THE FIRST PIONEERS. 

In his fascinating history of "The Winning of the West," Theodore 
Roosevelt says that "The two facts of most importance to remember in 
dealing with our pioneer histoiy are, first, that tlic western portions of Vir- 
ginia and the Carolinas were peopled by an entirely different stock from 
that which had long existed in the tidewater regions of those colonies; and 
secondly, that except for those in the Carolinas who came from Charles- 
ton [comparatively few], the immigrants of this stock were mostly from 
the north, from their great breeding-ground and nursery in western 
Pennsylvania." 

We find here an interesting problem. How came it to pass that a 
community of Quakers, non-resisting, intensely domestic, circumspect, 
loathing everything that smacked of adventure, should have formed the 
'•breeding-ground and nursery" of as warlike, and restless, and desper- 
ately venturesome a race as this world has seen? 

We have a favorite saying that "America is an asylum for the op- 
l)ressed of all nations." But America was not always so. Scarcely had 
the Puritans landed at Plymouth before they began seeking heretics. 
The Cavaliers of the south, more tolerant of venial sins, admitted other 
sects to their Canaan, but on condition that they pay tithes to support an 
episcopal clergy. In most of the colonies a Catholic was little better 
than a witch, and likely to be attainted with treason as well. If to a her- 
etical creed the unlucky immigrant added a foi*eign tongue, this stamped 
him as a boor, and his case was liard indeed. But the Qyakers "unlike 
many other martyrs, did not become persecutors in turn.''_j Pennsylvania 
was an asylum for the oppressed. 

THE PENNSYLVANIA-GERMANS. 

And in Europe there were many oppressed. About the time that the 
Quakers began to settle Pennsylvania— say in 1682 or 1683— an immigra- 
tion of Germans set into this region from the Rhine valley and the high- 
lands of south Germany and Switzerland. These were the fore-runners 
of an immense tide of persecuted Germans which soon swept into the 
Quaker territory, by invitation of Penn, and established a new ethnic di- 
vision of our people, to be known thenceforth as Pennsylvani.i-Dutch. 
They were not Dutch, and repudiated the name; but it is now as well 
Americanized as "corn" for maize, or "buffalo" for bison, and is not with- 
out justification on linguistic and ethnological grounds. 

The first German immigrants were sectarians, who, like the Quakers, 
refused to take oaths or bear arms. Their descendants gave some 



trouble ou tliis account duiiug the revolution and the civil war, and this 
pplicy of non-resistance on the part of a few early sectarians brought an 
unmerited stigma upon the whole body of Pennsylvania-Dutch. The 
truth is that the mass of German immigrants had no such scruples, 
being for the most part Lutherans or Reformed, and that they furnished 
as large a percentage of soldiers in the wars that followed as any other 
race. - — 

We all know the story of Putnam leaving his plow in the furrow to 
.ioin the army; but we should also know that the Pennsylvania-Dutchman 
J^Iuhlenberg left his pulpit to accept a colonelcy under Washington, and 
that he dismissed his congregation with the words: "There is a time 
to preach, and a time to pray; but there is also a time to fight, and that 
time has now come." We should know that the first outside colonists who 
arrived to assist their New England brethren at the siege of Boston were 
Captain Nagel's company of Berks County Dutchmen.* 

The Pennsylvania-Germans printed the first Bible in a European 
tongue that appeared from an American press. They were the first to 
suggest the abolition of slavery, asking in their quaint petition (1688), 
"Have not these negers as much right to fight for their freedom as you 
have to keep them slaves?" 

These Germans were the very type and pattern of husbandmen. 
Shrewdly picking out the fertile limestone valleys at the foot of the Alle- 
ghanies, they soon monopolized the whole farming region from Easton on 
the Delaware, past Allentowu, Reading, Lebanon, Lancaster, and York. 

*This company belonged to the regiment of "expert riflemen" that, on the day 
before Washington was appointed commander-in-chief, was ordered by Congress to 
be raised from the backwoodsmen of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia—the 
only region in America where the rifle was used. Pennsylvania supplied nine 
companies, Maryland two, and Virginia two, one of the latter being headed by 
Daniel Morgan. I have elsewhere published a sketch of this famous organization 
of scouts and sharpshooters, in which I show that these backwoodsmen were the 
first to formally threaten armed resistance against Great Britain, the first outside 
colonists to assist New England, the first troops levied by an American Congress, 
the first to use weapons of precision, the first to employ open-order or skirmish 
formation, and that on the 1st of January, 1776, they were re-organized as the 
First Regiment of Foot of the Continental Army. Their markmanship, endurance, 
and thorough scouting, made them Washington's favorite troops throughout the 
war, and they were styled by the British, on account of their hunting-shirts and 
rifles, "shirt-tail men, with their cursed twisted guns; the most fatal widow-and- 
orphan-makers in the world." They served with aistinction in most of the im- 
portant battles of the war. They alone penetrated the citadel of Quebec; they 
turned the tide of battle at Saratoga by deliberate sharpshooting. General Fraser 
being one of their victims; they were Morgan's main reliance at the Cowpens; 
and their kinsmen from west of the mountains were the men who crushed 
Ferguson at King's Mountain. British regulars were powerless against them, 
and it was for this reason that, in negotiating for Hessian mercenaries, it was 
expressly stipulated that a certain proportion of them should be riflemen, the 
rifle being unknown in the British army, as it was also unknown to the New 
Englanders and coast people generally. This weapon was introduced into America 
about 1700 by the Germans of Pennsylvania, who remained almost the only manu- 
facturers of it down to the Hawken brothers of St. Louis, whose "Mississippi 
Yager" was for thirty years the chosen arm, of our Rocky Mountain trappers. 

See "The Birth of the American Army", Harper's Magazine, May, 1899. 



This cresceut formed at the time the western frontier of Pennsylvania. 
It -was the Quakers' buffer against the Indians. It was the westernmost 
settlement of British subjects in America. These "Dutchmen" were not 
mere Indian traders. They had come to stay; and they did stay, stanch 
possessors of the soil, and founders of a new fatherland. 

But there was another reason than limestone soil Avhy the early Ger- 
mans preferred the frontier. The society of our seaboard was aristo- 
cratic, no less in New England than in Pennsylvania and Virginia. The 
Pennsylvania-Dutch were nothing if not democratic, in a social sense; so 
they tarried not on the seacoast. 

Some of them had at first settled in New York, but they soon became 
discontented with the treatment they received from aristocratic pro- 
prietors and officials, who regarded them as mere beasts of burden; and 
they moved in a body into Pennsylvania. 

THE SCOTCH-IKISII. 

Shortly alter Uiis tide of German immigration set into Pennsylvania, 
another and very diifereut class of foreigners began to arrive. These 
were the Scotch-Irish, or L'lstermen of Ireland. When James I., in 1607. 
confiscated the estates of the Irish in six counties of Ulster, he turned 
them over on long leases to a body of Scotch and English Presbyterians. 
The career of these immigrants was at first prosperous, though necessarily 
turbulent. But as their leases began to expire, persecutions followed that 
proved unbearable, and the Scotch-Irish began emigrating to America. 
As Froude says, "In the two years that followed the Antrim evictions, 
thirty thousand Protestants left Ulster for a land where there was no legal 
robbery, and where those who sowed the seed could reap the harvest." 
The early Scotch-Irish were a brave but hot-headed race, as might 
be expected of a people who for a century liad been planted amid hostile 
Irish, and latterly had sutTercd the persecutions of Charles I. Justin Win- 
sor describes them as having "all that excitable character which goes 
with a keen-minded adherence to original sin, total depravity, predestina- 
tion, and election," and as seeing "no use in an Indian but to be a target 
for their bullets." On one occasion they even took up arms against the 
Quakers, and marched to chastise them in Philadelphia. "The Quakers," 
says Fisher, "were ready for them, and had no hesitation in fortifying 
Pliiladelphia; for the chance of a shot at a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian was 
too much for their scruples of religion." 

Neither did the Scotch-Irish at first assimilate with the Germans. 
The latter, wherever colonized by themselves, wore a plodding, undemon- 
strative, rather thick-witted folk, close-fisted, and taking little interest in 
public affairs that did not concern either their church or their pocket- 
books. They were slow to anger, and would take a good deal of abuse. 
but tenacious of their rights, and could fight like bulldogs when aroused. 
The Scotch-Irish were (jiiick-witted and <iuick-temporeil, rallier visionary, 
imperious and aggressive. I mention these traits of the early immigrants 
because tliey had much to do with the events that followed. And I do 
not wish it to be thought that we are gathered iiurely to sing tlie praises 



of oui- ancestors. Mutual-jiclmiration societies are a nuisauce and a l)ore. 
If we are to get any good out of history, we naiist face the truth in all its 
phases, whether it be complimentary to ourselves or not. -^ 

The Scotch-Irish, being by tradition and habit a border people, pushed 
to the extreme western fringe of settlement. They were not over-solicit- 
ous about the quality of soil. When Arthur Lee of Virginia was telling 
Doctor Samuel Johnson of a colony of Scotch who had settled upon a 
particularly sterile tract in western Virginia, and had expressed his wonder 
that they should do so. Johnson replied, "Why sir, all barrenness is com- 
parative; the Scotch will never know that it is barren." 

So it was that these people became, in turn, our frontiersmen. Imme- 
diately they began to clash with the Indians, and there followed a long 
series of border wars, waged with extreme ferocity, in which it is some- 
times hard to say which race was most to blame. One thing, however, 
is certain: if any race was ordained to exterminate the Indians, that race 
was the Scotch-Irish. 

PENNSYLVANIA'S MARCH SOUTHWESTWARD. 

When the land west of the Susquehanna was first opened for settle- 
ment, the Germans did not fancy it, because the soil was rocky and poor. 
The Scotch-Irish entered the mountains, but even they were not attracted 
in large numbers by such rugged country. The chief overflow of Penn- 
sylvania emigrants passed southwestward into western Maryland and 
the Shenandoah valley. Fertile bottom-lands lay in this direction, and the 
Germans were not slow to find tliem. The first house in western Virginia 
was erected by the Pennsylvania-German Joist Hite,* who established 
a colony of his people near the future site of Winchester. A majority of 
those who settled in the eastern part of the Shenandoah valley were 
Pennsylvania-Germans. "So completely did they occupy the country 
along the north and south branches of that river," says a local historian, 
"that the few stray English, Irish, or Scotch settlers among them did not 
sensibly affect the homogeuousness of the population." Here, as in Penn- 
sylvania, the Germans sought out the rich bottom-lands and settled on 
them for good, while the Scotch-Irish pushed a little to the west of them 
and occupied more exposed positions. There were representatives of other 
races along the frontier, English, Huguenots, Irish — even some Quakers 
were among them; but the Germans and Scotch-Irish predominated. 

Among those who made this long "trek" from Pennsylvania southwest- 
Avard were the ancestors of David Crockett. Samuel Houston, John C. 
Calhoun, "Stonewall" Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln. 

SETTLEMENT OF AVESTERN CAROLINA. 

As the Germans were prolific, liked large farms, and Avere steadily re- 
cruited from the old country, they were ahvays furnishing a surplus of 
young men and new-comers to people the west. They were not so much 
given to individual enterprise as the Scotch, but it was not unusual for 

♦The first white man's house in Ohio was built by the Pennsylvani.i-German 
missionary. Christian Frerlerieli Post. 



them to form a colony and flit to some distant Eden, settling upon it like 
a swarm of bees. In this manner there went on a gradual but sure pro- 
gress of northern peoples across the Potomac, up the Shenandoah, across 
the Staunton, the Dan, and the Yadkin, even to Savannah. The proportion 
of Pennsylvania-Dutch in this migration is commonlj' imderestimated. 
The archivist of North Carolina, the late William L. Saunders, Secretary 
of State, says that "to Lancaster and York counties, in Pennsylvania. 
North Carolina owes more of her population than to any other known part 
of the world," and he adds, "never were there better citizens, and cer- 
tainly never better soldiers." He calls attention to the interesting fact 
that when the North Carolina boys of Scotch-Irish and Pennsylvania- 
Dutch descent followed Lee into Pennsylvania in the Gettysburg cam- 
paign, they were returning to the homes of their ancestors, by precisely 
the same route that those ancestors had taken in going south. 

A DISTINCT PEOPLE. 

I dwell somewhat upon tlie manner in which the western part of the 
southern colonies was peopled, because it was from this region that the 
trans-Alleghany movement began, and from which came the great ma- 
jority of our pioneers. Kentucky was settled from Virginia, and Tennes- 
see from Virginia and Carolina; but these settlers were mostly of Pennsyl- 
vania origin. So when we speak of the Virginians who settled Kentucky, 
or the Carolinians who founded Tennessee, or of Morgan's Virginia rifle- 
men in the revolution, wo should not confound them with tlie typical Vir- 
ginians or Carolinians of the coast. They were neither Cavaliers nor Poor 
Whites, but a radically distinct and even antagonistic people, who are 
appropriately called the Roundheads of the South. Aristocracy was their 
bugbear. They had little or nothing to do Avith slavery, detested the state 
church, loathed tithes, and distrusted all authority save that of conspicu- 
ous merit and natural justice. "There is but one thing I fear on earth," 
remarked one of them to the French traveller Collot. "and that is what 
men call tlieir laws and their justice," The intense individualism of our 
pioneers was the first distinctiA'o characteristic that they developed. It 
entered their blood the very moment that they landed on American soil. 
The first English resident of Philadelphia was Edward Drinker, who 
was born in a cabin near the present corner of Walnut and Second streets 
at a time when the site of Philadelphia was occupied by only a few 
Indians, Swedes and Hollanders, besides his father's family. He saw 
William Penn come to Pennsylvania, and lived to see the city of Phlla- 
(iclphia arise on the ground where he had hunted deer. He saw botli the 
l)rginning and the end of the British empire in Pennsylvania. And though 
lie had been a subject of the king for 95 years, when the royal proclama- 
tions were issued curtailing the liberties of Americans, the old man bought 
tliem all and gave them to his great-grandsons to make kites of. 

Tliis spirit of independence entered into the economic and social life of 
the pionii'rs, as well as into their politics. It is in sharp contrast to the 
semi-communal life of the French habitants of Canada and Louisiana. 
The French looked to the government for evervthing; the Americans were 



never so happy as when the government let them alone. The first agri- 
cultural experiments in Massachusetts and in Virginia were communal, 
but they were utter failures. The system of large landed proprietorship 
attempted in New York and elsewhere was also most repugnant to the 
better class of settlers. We have seen that the manorial grants of New 
York drove the pioneer element from that province, because tlieir ambition 
was to become owners and rulers, not tenants of the soil. The strong 
and even violent independence that made these men forsake all the com- 
forts of civilization and prefer the wild freedom of the border, was fanned 
at times into turbulence and riot; but it blazed forth at a happy time for 
this country when our liberties were imperilled. 

THE MA.N OF THE WEST. 

Both the Scotch-Irish and the Germans were clannish people so long 
as they remained in compact settlements of their own. They merely per- 
petuated each its own type. But when the more adventurous spirits of 
both races struck out for themselves and became pioneers in new lands, 
they were forced to amalgamate. In the extreme frontier settlements 
there was more intermarrying than historians have credited. That it 
produced a better type than either forebear is plain enough to those who 
study family records. These two human ores were picked from far dis- 
tant mines. The one was hard and the other tough. Fate cast them to- 
gether into the glowing crucible of wilderness life, and they fuzed, and 
ran together, and were cast into a new form of manhood. 

Even where blood was not crossed, a generation of frontier life 
changed Scotchman and German, Englishman and Huguenot, alike into a 
new and distinct character — the JNIan of the West. The romantic and haz- 
ardous career of the backwoodsmen bred in them a peculiar combination 
of daring and shiftiness, activity and cool endurance. Theirs was the 
satisfaction of overcoming trial and peril, and it made them a master- 
ful, self-confident people. They had a scorn of conventions and of re- 
straint. Law, to them, was no law unless it was based upon the primal 
rights of man. 

And the wilderness itself reacted upon these men and stamped upon 
them something of its own openness, naturalness, simplicity. As the 
pelage and ha^bits of animals vary with the climate, and new traits of 
character arise from change of environment, so the child of civilization 
turned out upon the wilderness to fight singly against strange odds, de- 
velops qualities unknown among those who lead a tamer existence. 
Pioneers, at the start, are made of no common clay. The weaklings of 
society are eliminated from frontier life. None but bold and sanguine 
spirits dare embark in such adventure; none but the hardy and self- 
reliant can endure its vicissitudes. The faint-hearted and irresolute, the 
torpid and effeminate, n^ust seek quieter asylums. We have, then, at first 
muster, a picked class of men, active, self-centered, buoyant, plucky to 
the backbone, whipped on by hazard and spun-ed by the explorer's zeal. 
The utter freedom and loneliness of forest life then tend to accentuate 
personalities that the friction of cities might abrade to a level sameness. 
The abrupt change of habits, the recovery of lost arts of wildcraft, the 



10 

invfulioii of fivsli exi^edients, the imperative call upon (loiiuant faculties 
that civilized iiiau is unconscious of possessins;. brint; out new character- 
istics, as nuisc-les commonly unused become conspicuous in a Sandovv. 

It vras thus that the Man of the West was born and nurtured in the 
Appalachian valleys. And to this wild life of the border, more, perhaps, 
than to any other feature in our history, may be traced those traits of 
sleepless vigilance and restless energy that are the most distinctive traits 
of American character today. Wherever you meet an American, whether 
on land or sea, in the arctics or the tropics, he is marked from all other 
races by his ceaseless activity. "To the true American," says Sargeant. 
•'repose is stagnation and rest a bore. His nature demands occupation of 
an exciting kind. The man who loafs, the trasnp and the flaneur, who is 
the fashionable variety of the species, are all anomalies in our civilization; 
the5- exist, but under protest; they are freaks, not types; sports, and not 
the natural growth of our soil." 

HIS LOVE OF ELBOW-ROOM. 

To conquer the wilderness as the early westerners conquered it. with 
ax and rifle, man must be born anew. He must re-learn an art so 
ancient that it has long since been forgotten by urban society — the art 
of wildcraft. The best of city-bred men, if left suddenly alone in the 
Avilderness, is soon dazed, bewildered, lost. Around him on all sides is 
an inexhaustible store-house from which a genuine woodsman would 
soon procure lire, food, shelter, and clothing, ease and contentment; but 
this heir of all the book-learning of the ages has no key to unlock it. He 
exists for a few days in terror, and then miserably perishes; or, if per- 
chance found by some rambling hunters before his life is extinct, he is 
likely to return to society a gibbering idiot, wrecked by exi>eriences 
which, to one who was in closer touch with nature, woidd have been a 
mere holiday-excursion. 

Through ignorance we underestimate botli the skill and the manly 
virtues essential to a pioneer. The man who can enter an unmapped 
forest such as once covered this country— enter it with no companion, 
and with no outlit save Avhat he carries on his own back, and can explore 
it, and dwell therein, and can wrest from the blind forces and hidden 
stores of nature both a livelihood and independence, is no ordinary mor- 
tal. And we underestimate the finer qualities of his soul. Such work 
can only be done by one who is not only in touch with, but a part of. 
nature; by one who loves the free forest life with a passion more intense 
than patriotism, and stronger than ambition or the greed of wealth. T1h> 
pioneer spirit, the force that really won the west cannot be understood 
imtil we realize how deep and overmastering was this love of nature for 
her own sake that was the ruling passion of such men as Daniel Boone.* 

•The fast hold that this Influence takes upon the imafrination Is testified in 
luirning words l).v nearly every writer who has experienced the joys of open-air 
life In a wild region. Prince Bismarck was not the only statesman who could 
say "I nm never so happy as when I am In well-greased top-boots, far away from 
civilization." Byron and Walter Scott were powerfully affected by this feeling, 
and Hol)ert Louis Stevenson had predecessors among scholars who- finally abandoned 



11 

DANIEL BOONE. 

I have named a great Peiinsylvanian and a great Missouriau. Ken- 
tucky claims him not alone. Daniel Boone had the good taste to be born 
in what is now the township of Exeter, Berks county, Pennsylvania, No- 
vember 2 (new style), 1734, within a few miles of where then resided both 
the paternal and maternal ancestors of Abraham Lincoln. His father was 
a native of Pennsylvania and his mother was a Quakeress. Boone died. 
September 23, 1820, on the north shore of the Missouri, forty-five mile's 
west of St. Louis. 

The long course of his wanderings is in itself a map of that route 
through which the west was entered and won. From the frontier of 
Pennsylvania to the Shenandoah, down the valleys to the Yadkin; aci'oss 
the mountains to Tennessee and Kentucky, and, in old age, across the 
Mississippi into the Spanish province of Louisiana, thence up the Osage 
and the Missouri, Avent this great pathfinder, blazing a trail for a civiliza- 
tion with whicli he had scant sympathy, and from which he received little 
but fraud and ill-treatment. Boone's biographers say that he considered 
himself "an instrument ordained of God to people the wilderness," and 
lie may have found solace in the tliought; but that very civilization was 
the death-knell of all his personal aspirations. An English scientist, Fran- 
cis Baily of the Royal Society, one day met Boone on the Ohio river, as 
the old scout was floating in his canoe on a hunting expedition to the far 
west, attended only by his dog. Baily asked him "whether it did not give 
him a secret satisfaction to behold .a province, in the discovery and set- 
tlement of which he had held so conspicuous a part, rise from a desert 
wilderness, and at once to flourish in arts and sciences and the conven- 
iences of life." But the old man "shook his head, and, with a significant 
frown, said they Avere got too proud; and then began to enter upon the 
disadvantages of great improvements of society." 

Many of the first settlers were victims of the A-ery civilizatio.n they 
introduced. Land speculators, following hot upon their trail, ousted them 
from the homesteads that their axes had cleared and their rifles had de- 
fended. Boone Avas by no means the only one Avho became disgusted with 



civilization for a simpler and more wholesome existence. The charm of the South 
African veldt has been acknowledged by James Bryce (Century Magazine, May, 
1896), and with rare power by Olive Schreiner (Fortnightly Review, August, 1896— 
note the striking parallel between the life of the old-time Boer and that of the 
American backwoodsman). Even so bleak and monotonous a region as the Pata- 
gonian desert has drawn from AiVilliam H. Hudson (Idle Days in Patagonia) 
an eulogium so sincere and beautiful that it holds the reader as by a spell. As 
ta the Sahara, read Bayard Taylor and Eugene Fromentin. The mystery and 
sublimity of the Mohave and Colorado deserts have inspired the best work of John 
Van Dyke. The enchantment of the Great Lone Land and of western Canada has 
been owned by W. F. Butler, Warburton Pike, and H. Somers Somerset; of the 
western forests, plains and mountains by a host of writers, including George 
Frederick Ruxton, the Earl of Dunraven, Theodore Roosevelt (see especially his 
Wilderness Hunter, p. xvi.), and John Muir. Every wild region of the earth has 
had its lovers among the most gentle and cultured of men, and a mere catalogue 
of such testimony would fill a book. But the fascination of wilderness, life is best 
expressed by Francis Parkman (Conspiracy of Pontiac, chapter xxvii) in a passage 
which I consider one of the best specimens in our language of restrained yet over- 
powering eloquence. 



12 

"what men call their laws and theii- justice." The annals of frontier 
life are full of instances wherein pioneers grew so sick of society that 
they would move as soon as they saw the smoke arising from a neigh- 
bor's chimney; and more than one of them, in extreme age, shouldei'ed 
his rifle and disappeared iu the forest, to be seen no more. 

I cannot dwell upon the thrilling incidents of Boone's life, nor upon 
the simple dignity and nobility of his character. Fame, in later times has 
done him justice, and the name of him, who, when living, was the sport 
of speculators, is now probably better known among the mass of the 
people in foreign lands than tliat of any other American, save Washing- 
ton. His character has been idealized in literature by Feuimore Cooper, 
and extolled by Lord Byron in tiie eight canto of Don Juan. 

THE FIRST AMERICAN REPUBLIC. 

Boone's earliest adventures west of the mountains were not in Ken- 
tucky, but in that part of western North Carolina that is now eastern 
Tennessee. From his home on the Yadkin, the hunter crossed the moun- 
tains and was exploring the Watauga region as early as 1760. On an 
ancient beech tree in the valley of Boone's Creek, a tributary of the Wa- 
tauga, may still be deciphered a faint inscription 

D. Boon 

CillED A. BAR On 

[this] Tree 

in ThE 
yEAR 1760. 

Both British and French Indian-traders and soldiers had been iu this 
region before him; but they had left no permanent marks of their wan- 
derings. In 1761 a party of hunters from Pennsylvania and contiguous 
counties of Virginia, piloted by Boone, began to use this region as a hunt- 
ing-ground, on account of the great abundance of game. From them, and 
especially from Boone, the fame of its attractions spread to the settle- 
ments of the eastern slope of the mountains, and in the winter of 1768- 
69 the first permanent occupation of eastern Tennessee was made by a 
few families from North Carolina. About this time there broke out in 
Carolina a struggle between tlie independent settlers of its western val- 
leys and the rich trading and official class of the coast. The former rose 
iu bodies under the name of "Regulators," and a battle followed in which 
they were defeated. To escape from the persecutions of the aristocracy, 
many of the Regulators and tlioir friends crossed the mountains and built 
their cabins in the Watauga region. Among these was James Robertson, 
a man of Virginia birth, Avho had subsequently moved with the Scotch- 
Irish to Carolina. Robertson, although of humble lineage, was a born 
leader, and destined to rank with George Rogers Clark and John Sevier 
as a maker of western history. He came to the Watauga iu 1770. Sevier, 
a native of the Shenandoah valley, and of Huguenot descent, soon joined 
Robertson, and it was chiefly due to the influence of these two men that, 
in 1772. there was osiablisliod by these "rebels" the first republic in 
AuMTlcn. This new coinnninwealtli was Icisod ui^on a wiiltcn cnnstitu- 



tion, "the first ever adopted by a community of American-born freemen." 
^'Thiis the Watauga folli." says Roosevelt, "were the first Americans who, 
as a separate body, moved into the wilderness to hew out dwellings for 
themselves and tlieir children, trusting only to their own shrewd heads, 
stout hearts and strong arms, unhelped and unhampered by the power 
nominally their sovereign. They built up a commonwealth which had 
many successors; they showed that the frontiersmen could do their work 
unassisted; for tlney not only proved that they were made of stuff stern 
<?nough to hold its own against outside pressure of any sort, but they 
also made it evident that having won the land they were competent to 
govern both it and tliemselves. They were the first to do what the whole 
nation has since done." The same writer acknowledges the part of Penn- 
sylvanians in the founding of Tennessee. "As in western Virginia the 
first settlers came, for the most part, from Pennsylvania, so, in turn, in 
what was then western North Carolina, and is now eastern Tennessee, 
the first settlers came mainly from Virginia, and, indeed, in great part, 
from this same Pennsylvania stock." 

It was in this republic of Watauga that, eight years later, the moun- 
taineers under Campbell and Shelby rendezvoused to attack and overwhelm 
the British at King's Mountain. 

PENNSYLVANIANS IN KENTUCKY. 

Boone was not, as many believe, the first white man to enter Ken- 
tuclcy. He was not even the first Penns3''lvanian to do so. About the 
year 1738 a German from western Virginia, John Peter Sailing, was cap- 
tured by Indians and carried through Kentucky and Illinois to Kaskaskia. 
He I'eturned to become one of the founders of a new commonwealth. 
Doctor Thomas Walker and companions from Virginia explored a part 
of Kentucky in 1748. In 1751, Boone's neighbor on the Yadkin, Christo- 
pher Gist, made a more thorough exploration of this region. Gist was 
soon to become the pioneer of extreme western Pennsylvania, and from 
there to serve as guide for young George Washington on his perilous mid- 
winter march to the Ohio. His brother was grandfather of Frank P. 
Blair of Missouri. 

In 1755, a woman of Pennsylvania birth, INIary Draper Ingles, Avhose 
father had established the first settlement west of the Alleghany divide, 
and who was herself the first American bride west of the mountains, 
was captured by the Indians and carried within the future bounds of Ken- 
tucky, Ohio, and Indiana. She was the first white woman known to 
liave seen that region. She finally escaped, after suffering extraordinary 
hardsliips. 

Two years before Boone entered Kentucky, two hunters from Pitts- 
burg, Avho had been in the Illinois country, came as far south as where 
Nashville now stands. These were James Harrod, who, on June 16, 1774, 
made the first settlement in Kentucky, and Michael Steiner (Stoner), a 
Pennsylvania-Dutchman who soon became famous in frontier annals as 
a scout and Indian fighter. Another great scout of the same race, Kas- 
per ;Mansker or Mansco, came with the Long Hunters to Kentucky in 1769; 



14 

MS an ludiau tiglitor ho soon won laurels second only to those of Simon 
Kenton. Kenton, who Avas a .Scotch-Irishman from western Virginia, 
went from Fort Pitt down the Ohio river and into Kentucky in 1771. Ue 
became a comrade of Boone, and proved one of the most reckless dare- 
devils on the border, but a matchless scout, and gave valuable service to 
the infant commonwealth. 

Boone first visited Kentucky on a hunting expedition in 1769, accom- 
]ianied by a few neighbors from Carolina. After enjoying six months 
of incomparable hunting, they were scattered by Indians, Boone and his 
brother alone remaining. After a year of this life, the brother started 
homeward to procure supplies, and Boone spent the next three months 
alone in the wilderness, Avith neither salt, sugar, nor Hour, and Avithout 
daring to light a campfire at night. 

In 1773, acting as the agent of a land-speculator named Henderson, 
he attempted to found a colony in Kentucky; but his party was route<l 
by. the Indians, and his eldest .son was slain. In the following year oc- 
curred the Indian outbreak known as Lord Dunmore's war. in Avhieh the 
great chiefs Cornstalk of the Shawnees and Logan of the Iroquois Avere 
Ititted against such frontiersmen as Boone and Kenton. Robertson, Sevier. 
Shelby, Cresap. and George Rogers Clark. It Avas at the conclusion of 
this Avar that Logan delivered, extemporaneously, that eloquent speech 
that has been admired Avith shamed face by generations of Americans.* 

THE FOUNDING OF TRANSYLVANIA. 

It Avas not until 1775 that Boone succeeded in colonizing Kentucky. 
His second movement Avas mad(> in fiat defiance of the British government. 
The royal governor of North Carolina, hearing of the project, issued a 
proclamation denoiuicing it as "a laAvless undertaking," "an infraction of 
the royal prerogative," and as sure to incur "His Majesty's displeasure, 
and the most rigorous penalties of the law." This menace Avas soon re- 
peated by Lord Uunmore of Virginia. 

Boone and his associates calmly ignored both tlie governors and their 
king, and straightway ]n'oceede<l about their business. Collecting his 
.-i.vemen at the Watauga settlement, Boone started to hCAV through track- 
less forests and canei>rakes that Wilderness Road to the Kentuckj* river 
lliat for many years Avas to be the chief highway of Avestern immigration. 

•"I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry 
and he gave hlni not moat; if ever he oamo cold and naked and ho clothed hliu 
not? During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan rimiainod Idle In 
his camp, an advocate of peace. Such Avas my love for the whites that my 
countrymen pointed as I passed and said 'Logan is the friend of the white man.' 
1 had even thought to have lived with you, but for the Injuries of one man. 
<."olonel Cresap (It was not Cresap, as Logan Imagined, but Greathouse], the 
last spring, In cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, 
not even sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in 
the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought 
It. I have killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance. I'or my country I 
rejoice at the beams of peace; but do not harbor a thought that mine Is the joy 
i>f fear. Logan never felt fear. He will \\«t tnin an his heel to save his life. 
Who Is there to mo\irn for Logan'.' Not one. 



15 

AVorkiug slioukler-to-sboulder with him was his old Yadkin neighbor, Col. 
Richard Callaway, the veteran Indian fighter who was ere long to be 
killed and scalped at Boonesborough, but whose sous, intermarrying with 
the Boones, were, with them, to be the first American settlers of western 
Missouri. Boone was soon to be joined by the fathers of two other famous 
Missourians, Doniphan of the Mexican war, and Thomas H. Benton, and by 
a man who ere long should leave a deeper impress upon western history 
than Boone himself, that great Virginian of Cavalier blood but backwoods 
training, George Rogers Clark. 

Fighting the Indians as they went, and losing several of their party, 
the axemen chopped their wa3^ to the Kentucky river. Here, three days 
after the battle of Lexington, the fort of Boonesborough, capital of the 
colony of Transylvania, was begun. It was not until the following Au- 
gust that these "rebels of Kentuck" heard of the signing of the Declara- 
tion of Independence, and celebrated it with shrill Avarwhoops around a 
bonfire In the center of their stockade. 

It is worthy of note that the first two settlements in Kentucky, those 
of Harrod at Harrodsburg, and Boone at Boonesborough, were made by 
Pennsylvanians, and that the third, at St. Asaph's was made by a man of 
Pennsylvania descent. Gen. Benjamin Logan. 

THE EASY WAY WEST. 

I have remarked that New England took no interest in the west until 
after the revolution. In fact, her attitude toward the trans-AUeghauy 
people was coldly critical, and at times even hostile. When Kentucky 
and Tennessee began to grow with unprecedented vigor, and were looking 
to the Mississippi as the natural outlet for their commerce, the commer- 
cial element of New England began to talk of shutting them off from the 
^lississippi and compelling them to market their products in the east — 
thus doing unto, the west precisely what England had done unto them. 

But there were some shrewd Yankees who saw signs of promise in the 
west. Among them were Rufus Putnam and Benjamin Tucker. The 
latter had been appointed surveyor-general under the federal geographer, 
and was assigned to duty in the Ohio country. He went as far west as 
Pittsburg, but found the Indians troublesome, and, having no taste for 
personal adventures among them, retux'ued for reinforcements. While in 
Pittsburg he heard much about the salubrity and natural resources of 
Ohio, and without seeing the country for himself, went back to New Eng- 
land full of a project to colonize Ohio with Yankee farmers. He revealed 
the scheme to Putnam, who heartily fell into it, and the two then started 
what would now be called a "boom." From personal inspection, said 
these promoters, they were satisfied that Ohio was the garden-spot of the 
west. In fact, they were so captivated by the allurements of that region 
that they had resolved to form a company to exploit it. They would let 
in a few friends, old comrades of the war, and such others as might be 
entitled under ordinance to enter lands in the west; but the elect must 
be few, and those interested must act at once. 



16 

Among those interested aa.is a certain New Bedford parson, Mauasseli 
Cutlei", by name, who had been blessed with legal as well as clerical 
training. Wiusor describes him as "shi-ewd and politic, not above telling 
half the truth and bargaining for the rest." The Ohio Company of New 
England was formed; the books were opened; subscriptions poured in; 
and Cutler became one of the three directors. As a man of tact, and a 
smooth talkei", he became the Company's spokesman. Here was a pioneer 
who had no illusions about winning a cabin in the wilderness by hard 
work and hard fighting. He dreamt of empire. He saw an easy way into 
the west. Cutler visited Congress. 

The latter body was in financial straits. It had land to sell at any- 
body's pi'ice. These old veterans of the revolution were just the stock to 
start a new and powerful state. An ordinance was prepared dividing the 
region north of the Ohio into three states, each of which was to be ad- 
mitted whenever it had a population of 60,000, guaranteeing freedom of 
worship, but discreetly saying nothing about slavery. It took a south- 
erner, Grayson of Virginia, to point out the omission, and it was rectified. 
The Ohio Company was to purchase 1,500.000 acres for $1,000,000.00, half 
down, in soldiers' scrip, which was worth 12 cents on the dollar. 

Meantime Cutler saw everybody worth seeing. He assured the Presi- 
dent of Congress that he, St. Clair, was the very man for governor of the 
new country. He got a tip from Hutchins, the federal geographer, that 
the valley of tlie Musknigum was the choicest spot in the west, and he 
forthwith saw that the Muskingum be included in the purchase. 

But opposition arose. Cutler knew how to meet it. He became ap- 
parently discouraged; he gave up. But there were congressmen who 
wanted this thing to go through; so one of them suggested to Cutler that 
it could be put through if he extend the contract and secretly take in a 
new company. Cutler decorously hesitated to treat his associates in the 
Ohio Company so shabbily; but argument prevailed. He now approached 
Congress with an offer to buy 5.000,000 acres for $3,500,000.00 in scrip. 
Lobbying did the rest. OHices were parcelled out. those who hesitated 
were persuaded, the recalcitrant were badgered by day and night until 
they were worn out. The bargain was struck. Five million acres of the 
best land in the west were sold for eight or nine cents jin aci'o, including, 
says Cutler himself, "One and a half million of acres for the Ohio Com- 
paii}', and the remaider for a private speculation, in which many of the 
principal characters of America are concerned," and he adds, "Without 
connecting this speculation, similar terms and advantages could not have 
been obtained for the Ohio Company."' 

Thus was perpetrated what McMaster calls "the first great land-job of 
the republic." This was the easiest way west. 

Shortly afterward, just seventeen years after the fort at Boones- 
borougli was erected, the first New England pioneers moved into Ohio. 
In a bxillet-proof barge, named Avith strange irony the "Mayriower," these 
modern pilgrims from New England floated down the placid current of 
the Ohio, In the budding month of April, 1788, drew into tlie mouth of the 
Muskingum, and anchored under the guns of a United States fort. 



17 

To leave this subject ligbtsomely, it may be observed that there were 
no illiterate bacliwoodsmen here. Classical scholarship was aboard that 
craft, and the four principal squares of the new metropolis of ^Marietta 
were christened, respectively, Campus Martius. Quadranaou, Cecilia, and 
Capitolium. But fate smiled not kindly, in the west, upon that species 
of learning that has made central New Yorli loolc lilie a puzzle-map of an- 
tiquity. A few months later in the same year, the backwoods school- 
master John Filson, magniloquent biographer of Boone, sought invest- 
ment for his savings, and with it purchased one-third of the future site 
of Cincinnati. Having laid out the streets of his "Future Great," he must 
find a name for it. Filson, too, had absorbed more classical learning than 
was good for him. The site of his city was opposite the mouth of the 
river Licking; L stood for Liclving, os was Latin for mouth, anti was Greelc 
for opposite, and — itrbsl Losantiurbs; poZis? Losantipolis — no doubt he lin- 
gered over the latter compound — but there was a chance to get in one 
more language, so he choose the French ville, and named the city Losanti- 
ville. 
It is sad to say that the untutored Indians scalped him. 

THE FAR WEST. 

If the Marietta venture was our first great land-.iob, it was not the 
last. The heroic age of the central west soon passed away. Men were 
no longer wanted to assert their independence of kings and castes, nor to 
hew their own way into the wilderness and make laws for themselves. 

Those in whom the old pioneer spirit survived were "crowded out." 
First among the Kentuckians to leave were Boone and his sons, the Calla- 
ways, the Coopers, and others of the old stock around Boonesborough 
who were to Americanize the frontier of Missouri. After Boone went 
Henry Von Phul, and other Kentuckians of Pennsylvania stocli who were 
among the first American residents of St. Louis. After him went also the 
father of Kit Carson,— and Kit himself was accompanied by many another 
youngster who in later times was to leave his name on some peak or 
pass or valley of the far-distant Rockies. Indeed, if we call the roll of 
American scouts, explorers, trappers, Indian fighters of the far west— of 
the men like John Colter, Robert McClellan, John Day, the Sublettes, Jim 
Bridger, Bill Williams, Joe Meek, Kit Carson, and their ilk, who trapped 
and fought over nearly every nook and cranny of the far west, from the 
Canadian divide to the "starving Gila" — Ave shall find that most of them 
were of the old Shenandoah-Kentucky stock that made its first trail from 
Pennsylvania across the Appalachians. 

A TRIBUTE TO THE PIONEERS. 

"The country beyond the AUeghanies," says the historian, "was first 
won and settled by the backwoodsmen themselves, acting under their own 
leaders, obeying their own desires, and following their own methods. 
They Avere a marked and peculiar people. The good and evil traits in 
their character were such as naturally belonged to a strong, harsh, and 



18 

homely race, Axhicli, with all its shortcomings, was nevertheless bringing 
a tremendous \\ork to a triumphant conclusion. The backwoodsmen 
were above all things characteristically American; and it is fitting that 
the two greatest and most typical of all Americans should have been re- 
spectively a sharer and an outcome of thoir work. Washington himself 
passed the most important years of his life heading the westward move- 
ment of his people. Clad in the traditional dress of the backwoodsmen, 
in tasselled hunting-shirt and fringed leggings, he led them to battle against 
the French and Indians, and helped to clear the way for the American 
advance. The only other man who in the American roll of honor stands 
by the side of Washington, was born when the distinctive work of tho 
pioneers had ended; and yet he was bone of their bone and flesh of their 
flesh; for from the loins of this gaunt frontier folk sprang mighty Abra- 
ham Lincoln." 

It is more than a coincidence that this tribute to the Man of the West 
should have come from one who himself is passing through the gamut 
of American possibilities; from one who, clad in buckskin and with rifle 
in hand, has known the stirring life of a western frontiersman, and who 
today leads the nation to new and wider destinies; from that most Ameri- 
can of present-day Americans, Tlieodore Roosevelt. 



We have seen that it took a peculiar people to win the west; tliat 
their chief peculiarity was a passion for independence; that they went 
west to realize it, where old laws and customs had not been established; 
that they chose the hardest and most perilous route; and that they did so 
because easier trails could onlj- be entered by first bowing to aristocracy 
and accepting servile positions. 

"What man would live cottined Avith brick and stone, 
Iiiiprisoned from llie influences of air, 
And cramped with selfish landmarks everywhere. 
When all before him stretches furrowless and lone 
The unmapped prairie none can fence or ownV" 

"What man with men would push and altercate. 
Piecing out crooked means to crooked ends, 
When he can have the skies and woods for friends. 
Snatch back the rudder of his undismantled fate, 
And in himself be ruler, church, and state?" 

The spirit of the American pioneer, thus voiced by Lowell, burned 
deep and unquenchable in the hearts of those exiles from an older civil- 
ization who first braved the hardships of western life. Though poor to 
destitution when they landed, they would not be hirelings nor inferiors. 
They sought freedom, and air. and elbow-room, the right to command and 
the power to enforce each his own will, and to reap what he had sown. 
For this they hewed their westward path, and felled and grubbed-out the 
little clearings of their homesteads. For this, with steeled nerves and 



.19 

steady eyes, they aimed their rifles at beast or savage, and "called the 
shot." They sought to realize in sober truth that Liberty, Equality, Fra- 
ternity! which has so often served as a party shibboleth, so seldom as 
anything more. And they did realize it, with an intensity and complete- 
ness such as but one other civilized race has enjoyed since the world 
began. 

We have no longer those "vast woods and un-man-stifled places" that 
still existed when Lowell sounded the slogan of the pioneer; and in de- 
spondent moods we may regret the passing of an age so full of oppor- 
tunities for the self-confident and strong. 

But in crowding together we have not merely polished the exterior 
of our lives; we have softened human-nature to its core. What we now 
call our laws and our justice are not such as once made rebels and Ish- 
maelites of honest men. Our immigrant no longer wears the collar of a 
redemptioner; no longer is sold as an indentured servant to pay the cost 
of his passage across the sea. We have learned that society has duties 
to the humble, and that it can curb the proud. 

In the old days Pennsylvania fostered man's high desire for independ- 
ence until it grew strong enough to overturn the ancient order and dared 
make a new and better one. But she did more than this. Into the worn- 
out body of society she breathed the new spirit of justice toward all and of 
malice toward none. She first made it tolerable for men of all creeds and 
conditions to dwell peaceably together. And not the west only, but all 
the world, owes to our mother-state this pioneer example of mutual for- 
bearance and brotherly love. 



The Pennsylvania Society of St. Louis 



OFFICERS— 1901-1902. 



PRESIDENT. 
GEORGE D. REYNOLDS. 

VICE-PRESIDENTS. 

ROBERT BUCHANAN. ED. A. NOONAN. 

\y. H. H. MILLER. 

SECRETARY. 

JAS. H. Mccracken. 

TREASURER. 
WM. S. FLEMING. 

DIRECTORS. 

E. R. DARLINGTON. THOMAS H. HAGERTY. 

ISAAC M. MASON. THOMAS M. McLEAN. 

RUDOLPH H. KLAUDER. . 



LiBRflRV OF CONGRESS 



T014 542 091 fi 



